Public school choice offers students a chance to follow
their interests, but it comes at a price, chipping away at the sense of
community once common among neighbors.

Public school choice offers students a chance to
follow their interests, but it comes at a price, chipping away at the
sense of community once common among neighbors.

The teenager’s sales pitch I was hearing in my kitchen made me
realize just how much public education has changed.

Matt Ragghianti, 17—his 6-foot-3 frame towering over me, my
wife, and my 5th grade son, Devin—was telling us why Devin should
eventually choose to attend Gar-Field, our local high school. Matt had
a litany of selling points: The 2,800-student school is not as rough as
its reputation; the International Baccalaureate program it offers is
great for college-bound teenagers; the swim team was fun; and he had an
opportunity to play lacrosse (Devin’s favorite sport).

Matt, who sometimes baby-sits my three sons, had his reasons for
making the pitch. And one of them was that he was simply defending his
choice to stick with Gar-Field. After all, the 10 high school students
on my quarter-mile street attend no fewer than four different public
high schools, a startling exercise of educational choice even in our
option-oriented culture.

"It’s a lower version of picking a college," Matt says about
the public-school-choice program in Prince William County. "For
students who care about school, it’s really a good thing to
have."

Matt Ragghianti decided to stick
with the neighborhood school, Gar-Field High School, because of its
International Baccalaureate program. Matt, who played lacrosse
there, will attend the College of William and Mary.
—Photograph by James W. Prichard

It’s worth noting, too, that this level of educational freedom
did not come about as a response to racial or economic inequities, to
provide an escape hatch from failing schools, or in response to
competition from private or charter schools. The countywide school
district serving our suburb simply believes that students who choose
their own schools will be more motivated, and families will feel more
invested if they have actively chosen a school.

Even for students like Matt, who chose to attend his local school,
the act of choosing itself, district officials reason, gives teenagers
more of a stake in proving that their decisions were right.

Yet it’s mind-boggling to me, someone who had no choice. I
lived in South Burlington, Vt., so I had to attend South Burlington
High School. Devin, on the other hand, is already weighing the options
of three or four public high schools he might attend. One of them has
an information-technology specialty that interests him as well as a
good lacrosse team. As it is, though, he seems primarily inclined
toward schools that his neighborhood friends might attend.

"It’s kids and their parents voting with their feet," says
Bryan C. Hassel, the co-author of the Picky Parent Guide: Choose
Your Child’s School with Confidence. "They’re making
that cost-benefit tradeoff by themselves."

But what are the benefits and drawbacks of offering so much choice?
What do teenagers in the same neighborhood gain, and what do they lose,
from attending different schools? The answer, it seems, is that there
is much to gain and much to lose.

It’s 5:45 a.m. on a May day on my street, that time between
darkness and light, when a dull-blue sky is just beginning to glow.
Lights are on in a few houses in this neighborhood of single-family
homes and Washington-area commuters. A pickup truck starts up and heads
down the street, the rumbling of its engine gradually replaced by a
chorus of chirping birds.

A slight 40-degree breeze blows an American flag hanging on the
Graveen family’s front porch. Inside, Mike, a freshman at
2,700-student Osbourn Park High School, bounds down the stairs and into
the kitchen, wearing khaki shorts and a white T-shirt. He flips a box
of Reese’s Puffs in the air and catches it, checking his
early-morning coordination. As he fills a bowl and begins to eat, his
mother, Cheryl, nurses a cup of coffee with both hands. A few minutes
later, his father, John, dressed in a gray suit, sits at the table and
scans The Washington Post.

Mike chose to attend "O.P.," as the students call it, because it has
a specialty program in biotechnology. His mother says he has been
interested in marine biology since elementary school.

But the school is in Manassas, about a 20- to 25-minute drive from
the neighborhood, compared with the five- to 10-minute drive to
Gar-Field. Mike has to wake up about 30 minutes earlier than the
Gar-Field students in our neighborhood. A little after 6 a.m., his
mother or father drives him to an elementary school about two miles
away, where he picks up a bus for O.P. students who live outside the
school’s regular boundaries.

While Mike heads off to the bus stop, his brother Wes, a senior at
the 2,500-student Forest Park Senior High School, is still asleep. Wes
doesn’t have to wake up until 6:30, one of the benefits of being
old enough to drive himself to school. He chose Forest Park over
Gar-Field because of its information-technology specialty, and has been
accepted to attend Virginia Tech University.

Brothers Wes, standing, and Mike
Graveen attend Forest Park and Osbourn Park high schools,
respectively. Wes’ program focuses on information technology,
while his brother studies biotechnology. The teenagers competed on
opposing school swim teams.
—Photograph by James W. Prichard

The Graveen morning routine is a stark contrast to what I remember
from high school. My brother, a year older than I, was usually the
first one down to the breakfast table. I had no choice but to join him
moments later. Sometimes, we never said a word, our views of each other
blocked by cereal boxes; other times, we argued about who was not
keeping his mouth shut when he was chewing. But every now and then, we
talked about what was going on at school. Then we left the house,
together, and walked to the bus stop.

At school, we didn’t cross paths often, but we ran into each
other at least a few times each day. Sometimes, we just nodded. Other
times, we stopped to talk.

Yet in six years, when my two older sons—who, like the Graveen
brothers, have different interests—are both in high school,
it’s very possible that their morning routine will mirror the
Graveen brothers’ more than the Bushweller brothers’ of the
late 1970s.

"The logistics were probably the biggest problem" with sending the
boys to two different high schools, says John Graveen, a former U.S.
Navy submarine commander who now works as a civilian for the U.S.
Department of Defense.

For instance, both Mike and Wes competed on their respective school
swim teams. So, this swim season, John, who helps out the Forest Park
team, rarely saw Mike compete, because the meets were usually on the
same nights. And Cheryl rarely saw Wes swim.

This past winter, the two schools’ swim teams were supposed to
compete against each other, but the meet was canceled because of a
snowstorm. John says he was looking forward to finally being able to
see Mike compete, but admits it would have been "kind of weird to have
your kids on two different teams competing against each other."

Looking back on four years of high school, Wes insists the benefits
of choice outweigh its drawbacks: "It would have been all right if I
had to go to Gar-Field, but I like things better the way they turned
out."

Still, his mother wonders about the effect that educational choice
has had on our neighborhood and other communities in Prince William
County.

"There’s not that camaraderie in the neighborhood that you
would have if all the kids went to the same high school," she says.
"You lose something."

The genesis of the Prince William choice program was in surveys of
high school seniors in the 63,100-student district, the third-largest
school system in Virginia. In the mid-1990s, Superintendent Edward L.
Kelly became increasingly concerned by responses to a question that
asked whether the teenagers felt they could have pushed themselves
harder.

Overwhelmingly, the students answered yes, remembers Gail Hubbard,
the district’s supervisor of gifted education and specialty
programs, who oversees the choice program.

In response to concerns about students not challenging themselves,
she says, the superintendent suggested the district start specialty
programs in high schools that teenagers could attend from anywhere in
the county.

"If students are interested in what they are studying, they usually
do better," Hubbard says. "That’s what the research shows."

Now, each of the eight public high schools in the county offers a
specialty program, from a performing arts focus to language studies to
an information-technology curriculum. Of the 18,500 public high school
students in the county, 3,963 are in specialty programs, and 1,138 of
those teenagers are attending schools outside their regular attendance
boundaries.

Hubbard says the program is entirely "interest-based." Students who
want to attend a school other than their assigned schools must simply
demonstrate they are interested. They are not picked based on
achievement scores or grades.

Once students are in a specialty program, however, they must keep
their grades up. If they don’t do the work and they drop out of
the specialty program, they have to return to their assigned
schools.

"This has been one of the most fascinating things I have ever done
[in education]," says Hubbard, who started teaching in 1963. "And
I’ve done some fascinating things all the way through."

When Veronica Lewis was in 8th grade, her mother remembers, "it was
almost like a recruiting environment" on our street and in her middle
school. Matt Ragghianti, a Gar-Field freshman at the time, was pushing
his school. Others were touting Osbourn Park. Still others were talking
up Woodbridge High School.

But Veronica had her sights set on O.P. A year earlier, she had gone
on a scuba-diving trip with her grandfather, an experience that sealed
her interest in sciences, especially marine biology. She wanted to
attend a high school with a strong science program, and O.P. fit the
bill. She is now a junior at the school.

Her mother, Suzanne, a former college-admissions director, felt her
daughter would be more motivated to learn if she was actively involved
in choosing a high school. "As a parent, it gives you a wonderful array
of options," she says.

Veronica Lewis set her sights on
Osbourn Park High School’s science program after she got
hooked on marine biology during a scuba-diving trip with her
grandfather. She is a junior at the school.
—Photograph by James W. Prichard

There have been other benefits. One particularly enthusiastic O.P.
science teacher, for instance, has sparked Veronica’s interest in
astronomy.

"I don’t know how my life would be if I didn’t go to
O.P," says Veronica, who plans to study sciences in college. "I’d
probably be a different person. I’m glad I went there."

Still, she concedes there are downsides.

She is a member of the National Honor Society, and she played on the
girls’ soccer team her freshman and sophomore years. She says she
would have been involved in more extracurricular activities if she had
attended a school that was closer to home. But getting rides home from
after-school activities is a challenge, she says.

Beyond that, she believes the atmosphere among the teenagers in our
neighborhood is probably different from what it would have been if they
weren’t going in different directions for school. "If we all went
to the same high school, we would have probably given each other rides,
talked about things going on at school," Veronica says. "It would have
been more of a street experience."

Some experts say that is why districts should take a hard look at
how public school choice affects neighborhoods.

"This is a culture that worships choice [in everything]," says Barry
Schwartz, the author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less,
a book published this year that suggests that having too many choices
sets people up for disappointment.

He believes school choice programs, specifically, can "undermine the
sense of community—and that is a bad thing."

Others disagree.

"There are lots of tensions in our lives," says Benjamin R. Barber,
the author of Jihad vs. McWorld, who writes frequently about
education and democracy. "The things we care about have a price."

Plus, he says, in today’s America, "there is very little in
the way of community, anyway. So the ability of students to choose
[where they attend school] comes at a relatively low price."

Gary Lawkowski lives a stone’s throw across the street from
Veronica Lewis. When he was in 8th grade, he also chose not to attend
Gar-Field. Rather, he was accepted into the most selective public high
school in Northern Virginia: Thomas Jefferson High School for Science
and Technology.

But "T.J," as the students call it, isn’t even in our county.
A regional magnet school that draws students from all over Northern
Virginia, it is in Fairfax County, a 30- to 40-minute drive or worse,
depending on traffic, from our street.

Gary Lawkowski enrolled in the
selective Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology,
located in neighboring Fairfax County. He loves the school’s
intellectual challenge, but not his long commute there.
—Photograph by James W. Prichard

"I don’t know if I would say [the commute] is necessarily
difficult," says Gary, a junior who rides a school bus to and from
classes each day. "I would say it is annoying."

The school’s highly motivated student body, and science and
technology focus, initially drew Gary. But in his three years at the
1,680-student school, his academic interests have changed. He is now
leaning more toward political issues and history than science and
technology.

Still, he says, if he had to make the choice again, he probably
still would attend T.J., largely because of its vibrant intellectual
atmosphere.

But his choice to attend T.J. did force him to forgo some things he
would have loved to do, such as play high school ice hockey. T.J. does
not have its own ice hockey team. Even as a T.J. student, Gary would
have been allowed to play on a local team that includes Gar-Field and
another county high school, because he lives in the Gar-Field
attendance district. But the practices were too early in the
afternoon—he couldn’t get home in time from T.J. to make
them.

Gary acknowledges that because he attends a school that is far from
the neighborhood, it’s been hard to maintain connections with the
other high school students on the street, who all attended Woodbridge
Middle School together. "Between schedules and such, I don’t see
a lot of the people around here," he says. "It takes more of a
conscious effort to talk to people on the street, as opposed to just
running into them."

Yet in the same breath, he points out that T.J. "sort of creates its
own community."

Recently, I was driving Devin and four 6th grade boys on our youth
lacrosse team home from practice. They all live within the Gar-Field
High School enrollment boundaries.

I posed the question to the rowdy, sweaty group: Where do you guys
plan to go to high school?

Devin echoes O.P., probably because it has one of the better
lacrosse teams at the moment. One boy says his father wants him to try
to get into T.J. Another says Hylton High School, maybe. Just one says
Gar-Field—that’s where his older brother goes.

It struck me that, when I was growing up, I did not engage in a
conversation about where I planned to go to school until my junior year
in high school, when I started checking out colleges. Yet these boys
are already eyeing potential choices like consumers picking a
product.

And even my high school alma mater in Vermont has started a school
choice program with two other high schools.

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